Australia fares badly in UN report on children

From The Age today, a comprehensive UNICEF report on children in more than 20 “economically advanced” countries shows that nearly 10 per cent of young Australians live in households where no adult is employed — the highest rate of all OECD countries except Hungary.

Nearly 12 per cent of Australian children fell below what the UNICEF report considered to be the “poverty line” — that is, were living in a house where the total income was less than half the country’s median.

Cath Smith, the chief executive of the Victorian Council of Social Services, said the changing nature of work — particularly for lower skilled workers and single parents — had pushed thousands of Australian families to the brink of poverty.

“There’s been a faster shift towards casualisation of the workforce over the past 10 years and what that means is that there are disincentives to work,” she said. “In effect we are taxing our lowest income families much higher than any other income cohort.”

The UK has also fared badly in the same report. I’ve asked the question whether this is a legacy of a generation of Thatcherite free-market economic rationalism. Or is it just bad management by the government of the last decade? Either way, a damning indictment.